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Pre frontal wave day. Mediocre wave, mostly 1-2 knots with some areas of 5+. 40 knots or so of WSW winds aloft. Some poorly defined lenticulars and a bit of visible rotor, but mostly a nasty gray broken/overcast layer around 13-14k with fallstreaks and virga coming out of it. Started out with almost calm surface winds towing to the west face of the Dogskins. It initally wasn't much better than enough to sustain with fairly weak winds. I ended up heading for a "bowl" in the ridge where the lift was funneled and used that to gain altitude. As I got higher on the ridge, the winds got stronger and the ridge lift better. At about 8,500' on the north end of the Dogskins I headed NE to Tule and quickly connected with the wave. The next 2 hours were fairly uneventful, mostly just avoiding fallstreaks, staying below the clouds and at times dealing with borderline wave by flying at minimum sink with barely 10 knots of ground speed. Around 14:30 when I was 20 miles or so south of Air Sailing the sky right over the airport had a lot of snow showers and the cloud bases were getting considerably lower so started heading on in. At first, I had to both speed up and circle to lose enough altitude to get below this deck. Once I made it back, the air was both very rough, but still had lots of lift so had to both slow down and use some spoiler to bleed off the last little bit of altitude. I ended up landing in 15-20 knots of SW wind which fortunately was before the winds and gusts really kicked up. In the end, I didn't even derig and just stuck the bird in the hangar as some of the gusts were strong enough that derigging wasn't that great an idea.

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Pre frontal wave day. Mediocre wave, mostly 1-2 knots with some areas of 5+. 40 knots or so of WSW winds aloft. Some poorly defined lenticulars and a bit of visible rotor, but mostly a nasty gray broken/overcast layer around 13-14k with fallstreaks and virga coming out of it. Started out with almost calm surface winds towing to the west face of the Dogskins. It initally wasn't much better than enough to sustain with fairly weak winds. I ended up heading for a "bowl" in the ridge where the lift was funneled and used that to gain altitude. As I got higher on the ridge, the winds got stronger and the ridge lift better. At about 8,500' on the north end of the Dogskins I headed NE to Tule and quickly connected with the wave. The next 2 hours were fairly uneventful, mostly just avoiding fallstreaks, staying below the clouds and at times dealing with borderline wave by flying at minimum sink with barely 10 knots of ground speed. Around 14:30 when I was 20 miles or so south of Air Sailing the sky right over the airport had a lot of snow showers and the cloud bases were getting considerably lower so started heading on in. At first, I had to both speed up and circle to lose enough altitude to get below this deck. Once I made it back, the air was both very rough, but still had lots of lift so had to both slow down and use some spoiler to bleed off the last little bit of altitude. I ended up landing in 15-20 knots of SW wind which fortunately was before the winds and gusts really kicked up. In the end, I didn't even derig and just stuck the bird in the hangar as some of the gusts were strong enough that derigging wasn't that great an idea.

TopMeteo - Weather Charts

Statistics

Relevant Rankings

Comment

Pre frontal wave day. Mediocre wave, mostly 1-2 knots with some areas of 5+. 40 knots or so of WSW winds aloft. Some poorly defined lenticulars and a bit of visible rotor, but mostly a nasty gray broken/overcast layer around 13-14k with fallstreaks and virga coming out of it. Started out with almost calm surface winds towing to the west face of the Dogskins. It initally wasn't much better than enough to sustain with fairly weak winds. I ended up heading for a "bowl" in the ridge where the lift was funneled and used that to gain altitude. As I got higher on the ridge, the winds got stronger and the ridge lift better. At about 8,500' on the north end of the Dogskins I headed NE to Tule and quickly connected with the wave. The next 2 hours were fairly uneventful, mostly just avoiding fallstreaks, staying below the clouds and at times dealing with borderline wave by flying at minimum sink with barely 10 knots of ground speed. Around 14:30 when I was 20 miles or so south of Air Sailing the sky right over the airport had a lot of snow showers and the cloud bases were getting considerably lower so started heading on in. At first, I had to both speed up and circle to lose enough altitude to get below this deck. Once I made it back, the air was both very rough, but still had lots of lift so had to both slow down and use some spoiler to bleed off the last little bit of altitude. I ended up landing in 15-20 knots of SW wind which fortunately was before the winds and gusts really kicked up. In the end, I didn't even derig and just stuck the bird in the hangar as some of the gusts were strong enough that derigging wasn't that great an idea.